Details about suspect emerge

SEAL BEACH, Calif. – He had been, at one time, an easy-going man who worked and played on the waters off Southern California.

Then life changed for Scott Dekraai, the man suspected of killing eight people and critically wounding a ninth in a shooting rampage at a Seal Beach beauty salon Wednesday.

A tugboat accident off the coast of El Segundo, Calif., in 2007 left him with severe leg injuries and killed a fellow deckhand. As he faced several surgeries to repair his leg, DeKraai became locked in a vicious custody battle for his 8-year-old son that friends and family believe may have sparked Wednesday’s bloodshed.

Authorities suspect he targeted Salon Meritage, nestled among a strip of beauty and health shops on Pacific Coast Highway, because his former wife, hair stylist Michelle Fournier, was working inside at the time. She was fatally shot.

Fournier’s family and friends said she feared her ex-husband, who they say devoted his life to gaining greater custody of their son. She was struggling to establish a new life despite a seemingly endless string of court appearances.

Her brother, Butch Fournier, said that when he turned on the television Wednesday and saw the salon’s awning sign, “I knew exactly who did it and exactly what happened.”

A portrait emerged Thursday from court filings and interviews of a hobbled, angry man. Earlier this year Dekraai returned to court seeking increased custody of the boy, according to court records. The most recent hearing occurred Tuesday, at which a court report recommended a near-equal custody arrangement between the two.

Dekraai, 42, and Fournier divorced in 2007 after four years of marriage. Since separating the two kept up a steady stream of invective, each accusing the other in court filings of being an unfit parent determined to manipulate their son.

He accused her of having a drinking problem. She, in turn, claimed he physically abused her and was “bipolar.”

In April, Fournier asked the judge in the custody proceedings to order Dekraai to pay her legal bills, court records show.

It is not known whether the judge made any ruling on Fournier’s request. Court papers do show Dekraai had received an unspecified sum of money to settle a lawsuit he filed against a former employer that stemmed from the accident in which he was injured.

That accident, friends and acquaintances said, served as a dramatic and ugly turning point in Dekraai’s life.

In February 2007, after years spent working on sport fishing boats, tugboats and other marine jobs, the licensed maritime officer was working aboard a tugboat in Santa Monica Bay. A rope tethering the tug to a fuel barge went suddenly taut, pinning another member of the crew against a wall with such force that she was crushed to death.

In his rush to help the woman, Dekraai was raked across a metal cleat by the rope and suffered a serious leg injury.

People who know him say Dekraai was changed by the incident. Once light-hearted, his mood turned dark as he struggled with chronic pain and the guilt of not having been able to save the woman.

In 2008, Dekraai’s doctor diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the accident, according to court records.